Hi, my name is Sophie Duncan. I'm an author of fantasy, paranormal, horror and erotica. Welcome to my blog. Here I'll ramble on about the books I'm reading and writing, ebooks, publishing and anything else I happen to think of.

Saturday, 1 April 2017

Dragon Diaries - A is for Alard - A to Z Challenge 2017 #AtoZChallenge

So, what does that mean? Well, each day, I'm going to tell you about a dragon - a dragon inspired by a name that I generated randomly using a name generator (I haven't looked up the derivation of any of these names, I have just run with how they make me feel, their sound on the tongue).

I'll tell you all about my Dragon of the Day, and share some flash fic about their lives. Any genre, any character, any look - prepare to be surprised and (I hope) entertained by my dragonly inspirations :).

~

is for Alard

To give him his full title, Le Comte D’Alard, has not been a dragon all his life. Until 1546, he was a nobleman in Brittany. In that year, Le Comte married, a political alliance that turned out to be disastrous, mainly because his beautiful young wife revealed herself on their wedding night to be a witch intent on position, but not a husband. Le Comte awoke not as a human, but as a living statue, a three foot high replica of the dragon on his coat of arms.

Made mute by his new condition and only able to converse through thought with the woman who now held him prisoner, Alard found comfort in books. His wife indulged his passion and he amassed a large library, his hoard.

Although she has provided him with immortality, Alard’s wife could not deliver it for herself, and when she crossed one person too many, her castle fell. Alard’s books were taken as a prize of conquest and the handsome dragon statue went with them when the thieves found they could neither separate him from the books, nor the books from each other. From then on, Alard travelled wherever his hoard went, until, finally, they both came to rest in an English country house. Alard has been there ever since, his collection growing steadily with the generations, and, although the fine black paint of his scales has long since sloughed off, he is as content as he can be as he waits for day when he finds the key to ending his immortality.

The footsteps came from the back of his library and Alard opened one eye, loathed to uncurl from his comfortable position on the top of the ancient history stack, but checking just in case. It wasn’t visitor season, so he didn’t have to spend all day locked in a dramatic snarl on the plinth at the entrance to the library, but a member of the household finding their statue snuggling down over the scent of rare old leather might have been difficult to explain.

Not many people came this way, it was a bit dusty and away from the big windows that bathed the reading chairs in southern sunlight, so Alard hoped not to be disturbed. However, he was to be disappointed, because the soft pad of shoe on parquet floor came closer. He uncurled a little, flattening his long, slender body to line of the book shelf, relying on the shadows to disguise his position. Then he watched.

The owner of the footsteps rounded the end of the stack: a young woman, long dark hair flowing freely down her back, almost touching the waistband of her fashionably ripped jeans. Yet it was her eyes that Alard was interested in, since they scanned the area in a way that made him shrink back even further. He had only seen that kind of knowing once before in his life.

‘Where are you?’ the words slipped into his mind and it had been such a long time that Alard flinched in shock.

The young woman’s gaze zeroed straight in on his movement and he froze. Her stare widened for a moment - maybe she hadn’t believed the legends, but as she settled, Alard knew he had been caught.

‘Hello,’ she began again, a small smile playing at her lips.

Alard did not respond, old memories firing off all sorts of bad possibilities in his thoughts.

She stepped towards his vantage point. He backed off rapidly, claws the only thing stopping him from falling off the other side of the shelves.

Alard hunched in place, his small wings wrapped protectively around his body as he failed to decide what to do. He felt something from this woman, he recognised magic, and that frightened him.

‘My name is Gemma,’ she carried on, lowering her hand and clasping it in the other nervously. ‘You are Le Comte D’Alard.’

‘You know my name?’ Alard could not help himself as he replied: his name had been lost for centuries.

‘I know you were once human. I know you come from Brittany. I know your wife did this to you,’ Gemma gushed, her thoughts almost falling over each other and then she admitted, ‘I have been dreaming about you - about us.’

‘Us?’ Alard checked, staring with dread into those knowing eyes.

Yet there was no malice there, he saw no darkness, no obsession with power, and slowly an emotion crept up on his that he had not felt in centuries: hope.

‘I want to help,’ Gemma told him. ‘I have to make it right.’

~

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It can, I agree. And I found it fun not to even look up the name's derivation, but to just go on instinct - I may be way off, but I wanted the sounds to be important to me, rather than derivation this time around :)Thanks for stopping by.

Wow. I knew this would be a great A to Z Topic, but you started it off with a bigger bang than even I expected. Great job. I was into the Dragon before the flash fiction, which left me wanting to know if she saved him.

Hi Sophie - what a wonderful tale to tell - loved reading it and I was visualising the whole thing too .. excellent telling ... now I need to know what happens ... A for Alard definitely doesn't want to stay in his dust guise ... cheers Hilary